husband, who loved me.  Why, I would give my life for him, and bear any kind of torture if it would add to his happiness.  But why write this nonsense to you, who never acted as if you cared an atom for any boy, not even Dick St. Claire, who used to give you sugar hearts and call you his little wife. Entre nous (who says I do not know two French words?) mamma would like to make a match between Dick and me, but she never will—­never!  Dick is nice, and I like him, but not that way.  Poor mamma!  How much she thinks of money and position!  I tell her she ought to have a photograph of the old Langley House hung up in her room to keep her in mind of her former condition.  Just now she has the craze to hammer brass and paint in water-colors, and goes over to Mrs. Atherton’s to take lessons.  Don’t you think that Mrs. Peterkin—­May Jane—­had like aspirations with mamma, and wanted to join the class; but the teacher found that she had as many pupils as she could attend to, and so May Jane is left out in the cold.  But Mr. Peterkin says, ’By George, my wife shall have ‘complishments if money can buy em!’ And so, I suppose, she will.  What strides those Peterkins have taken, to be sure, and what a big house he has built with such a funny name.—­“Le Batteau”, which, as he pronounces it, sounds like Lubber-too!  It is just finished, and they have moved into it.  I have not been there, but Tom has, and he says it fairly glitters, it is so gorgeous, and looks inside like those chariots which come with circuses.

’You ought to hear Peterkin talk about his ’Ann Lizy, who, he says, “is to Vassar, gettin schoolin’ with the big bugs, and when she comes hum he is goin’ to get her a hoss and cart for her own, and a maid, and a vally, too, if she wants one.”  Well, there are some bigger fools in the world than I am, and that’s a comfort.  As for Billy, he stammers worse, if possible, than he used to when he told us we were “pl-p-plaguey mean to pl-pl-plague Ann Lizy so;” but I guess I will let him burst upon you in all the magnificence of his summer attire—­his almost white clothes, short coat, tight pants, pointed shoes, and stove-pipe hat to make him look taller.  He comes here occasionally to see Tom, and always talks of you.  I do believe you might be Mrs. Billy Peterkin and live at Lubber-too, if you wanted; but, really, Billy is very kind to Harold, who gets twice as much wages in the office, when he writes there, as he would if it were not for Billy.

’Tom is home, doing nothing, but taking his ease and aping an English swell.  You know he was with mamma and me in England, and since his return has effected everything English, and looks quite like the dude of the period.  He, too, seems interested in your return; and I don’t know but you might be mistress of Tracy Park, if you could fancy the incumbrance.  Dick St. Claire is going to Vassar to see you and Nina graduate; and Harold, too, if he possibly